The foregoing reflections are not intended to raise an issue as to the wisdom of foreign missions. They are simply intended to illustrate how it is possible and natural for President Taft to consider Professor Worcester “the most valuable man we have on the Philippine Commission.” The Professor’s menagerie is a vote-getter. Also, President Taft’s whole Philippine policy being founded upon the theory that “the great majority” of the Filipino people are in favor of alien thraldom in lieu of independence, he tolerantly permits their editors to “let off steam” through clamor for independence. This privilege they do not fail to exercise to the limit. The attitude of the Insular Government permits the native press much latitude of “sauciness,” in deference to the American idea about liberty of the press. In the exercise of this privilege during the last few years the native press has gone the limit. However, there was no way to stop them, on the principle to which we had committed ourselves. The thing was very mischievous, and became utterly intolerable. There was a native paper called Renacimiento (Renaissance). This paper was long permitted to say things more or less seditious in character which no self-respecting government should have tolerated. This was done pursuant to the original theory, obstinately adhered to up to date, that there was no real substantial unwillingness to American rule. Of course, if this were true, newspaper noise could do no harm. Therefore it was permitted to continue. Finally, however, like a boy “taking a dare,” the Renacimiento published an article on Professor Worcester which intimately and sympathetically voiced the general yearning of the Filipino people to be rid of the Professor. In so doing, however, the hapless editor overstepped the limits of American license, and got into the toils of the law, by saying things about the Professor that rendered the editor liable to prosecution for criminal libel. The Professor promptly took advantage of this misstep, to the great joy of the authorities, who had been previously much goaded by independence clamor. The result was that the paper was put out of business and the editor was put in jail. No doubt the editor ought to have been put in jail, but his incarceration incidentally served to tone down Filipino clamor for independence. Subsequent to this coup d’état, the Professor did a little venting of feelings in his turn. He made a speech at the Y. M. C. A. on October 10, 1910, which was a highly unchristian speech to be gotten off in an edifice dedicated to the service of Christ. The Manila papers give only extracts from the speech, and I have never seen a copy of it. From the newspaper accounts, it seems that the Professor was determined to, and did, relieve his feelings about the Filipinos. The Manila Cable-News of October 11, 1910, quotes the Professor as referring to his pets, the non-Christian tribes, as “ancestral enemies of the Christians.” Thus for the first time is developed an attitude of being champion of the uncivilized pagan remnant, left from prehistoric times, against the Christians of the Islands. The Cable-News also says that Professor Worcester “laughed at the idea that the Islands belonged to the so-called civilized people and held that if the archipelago belonged to any one it certainly belonged to its original owners the Negritos.” This remark about the “so-called civilized people” was as tactful as if President Taft should address a meeting of colored people in a doubtful state and call them “niggers.” Another of the Manila papers gives an account of the speech from which it appears that the burly Professor succeeded in amusing himself at least, if not his audience, by suggestions as to the superior fighting qualities of the Moros over the Filipinos, which suggestions were on the idea that the Moros would lick the Filipinos if we should leave the country. (The Moros number 300,000, the Filipinos nearly 7,000,000.) The Professor’s remarks in this regard, according to the paper, were a distinct reflection upon the courage of the Filipinos generally as a people. The effect of Professor Worcester’s speech before the Y. M. C. A. may be well imagined. However the facts of history do not leave the imagination unaided. The Philippine Assembly, representing the whole Filipino people, and desiring to express the unanimous feeling of those people with regard to the Worcester speech, unanimously passed, soon after the speech was delivered, a set of resolutions whereof the following is a translation:
Resolved that the regret of the Assembly be recorded for the language attributed to the Honorable Dean C. Worcester, Secretary of the Interior of the Philippine Government in a discourse before the Young Men’s Christian Association, October 10, 1910. It is improper and censurable in a man who holds a public office and who has the confidence of the government. And as the statements made as facts are false, slanderous, and offensive to the Philippine people, their publication is a grave violation of the instructions given by President McKinley which required that public functionaries should respect the sensibilities, beliefs, and sentiments of the Philippine people, and should show them consideration. The words and the conduct of Mr. Worcester tend to sow distrust between the Americans and the Filipinos, whose aspirations and duties should not separate them but unite them in the pathway which leads to the progress and emancipation of the Philippine people. The influence of Mr. Worcester has caused injury to the feelings of the Filipinos, encouraged race hatred, and tended to frustrate the task undertaken by men of real good will to win the esteem, confidence, and respect of the Philippine people for the Americans.
Resolved further that this House desires that these facts should be communicated to the President of the United States through the Governor of the Philippines and the Secretary of War.
Presumably these resolutions were forwarded “to the President of the United States through the Governor of the Philippines and the Secretary of War.” But apparently they were pigeonholed when they reached Washington. I stumbled on them in the Insular Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives whither they had landed through Mr. Slayden of Texas. The distinguished veteran Congressman from Texas, being known as an enemy of all wrong things, was appealed to by certain persons in the United States to bring the matter to the attention of Congress. He did so by presenting to the House of Representatives an American petition which embodied a copy of the resolutions of the Philippine Assembly.
It thus becomes apparent that one of Professor Worcester’s principal elements of value is in bullying the Filipinos, and thereby smothering manifestations of a desire for independence, the existence of which desire is denied by President Taft’s Administration. The more the Filipinos cry for independence the greater seems the sin of holding them in subjection. So that Professor Worcester is very valuable in silencing independence clamor and thereby creating an appearance of consent of the governed, when there is no consent of the governed whatsoever.
In describing the discontent in distant provinces under brutal pro-consuls, which contributed largely to the final disintegration of the Roman Empire, Gibbon says:
The cry of remote distress is ever faintly heard.
The total failure of the above temperate, dignified, and vibrant protest of the Philippine Assembly to reach the ears of the American people is but another reminder that history repeats itself.